Tennis Coach Sells College To All Players

July 18, 1985|by RICKI STEIN, The Morning Call

When Tracy Austin and Andrea Jaeger started winning professional tennis tournaments - and oodles of money - at the ripe old age of 14, children started deluging tennis camps by the hordes. Parents wanted their children to cash in on success, too.

But where are Austin and Jaeger now? Out training with their physical therapists (and just plain therapists), attempting to get their injured bodies and minds back together again.

"There's a swing now to go back to amateur and college tennis, and Andrea and Tracy have had a lot to do with that," theorized Frank Brennan, the Stanford University women's tennis coach. "Parents and coaches figured that was the way to go: quit high school at 14 and turn pro. But Andrea and Tracy are having their troubles now and the parents and coaches are realizing that maybe that method is not so good. They're keeping their kids in school and letting them develop slowly."

Brennan offered a doubles clinic to a group of forty 9-17-year-old players yesterday at the fifth Greyhound Tennis Camp at Moravian College. In six years at the Stanford helm, Brennan has produced two NCAA Women's Team Tennis Championships in the last three years and six individual NCAA champions.

Brennan encouraged the youngsters to develop their doubles game because some college coaches recruit specifically for doubles and because as they get older, they'll be spending most of their recreational tennis time engaged in doubles play with friends. Later, the loquacious coached talked excitedly about tennis' future at the college level.

"For every kid who's at these camps in Pennsylvania, Iowa, Minnesota, California and Florida, one is going to make it big. The rest are going to be out hitting the backboard. The odds are not good," Brennan emphasized. "So more and more of them are going to college so they have something to fall back on if and when they don't make it on the pro circuit."

According to Brennan, of the top 31 women players on the professional circuit, only three have "seen the inside of a college and all three have gone to Stanford. One is Alycia Moulton, who graduated in '82, one is Elise Burgin, who graduated in '84, and the third is Kathy Jordan (from King of Prussia), who got through two-and-a-half years. Moulton is 21st in the world, Burgin is 31st and Jordan is 10th."

Last spring, Burgin lost in the finals of a tournament in Texas to Martina Navratilova.

"Now everybody - agents, players, fans - are saying to Elise, 'Wow, you went to college and look how well you're doing,"' Brennan related. "College took a bad rap for a while. But the college programs are becoming so deep in talent. The kids are looking for a healthy balance - they're going to classes, they're playing tennis, they're going to football games, they've got boyfriends. They're not putting all their eggs in one basket."

Brennan doesn't put all his eggs - or tennis balls, for that matter spend the school year in Palo Alto, Calif. but always return to their native Fairlawn, N.J. for the summer. "It's a rule," Brennan said. He runs his own tennis camp in New Jersey and Florida and visits a few tournaments to look for potential recruits.

"I love it. I feel like the IBM salesman. I've got a great product to sell," the 42-year-old Brennan said, explaining why he has no plans to leave Stanford in the next decade or so. "My recruits are from all over the country and I'm eastern oriented because the academics are so strong here. Easterners are bright and knowledgeable about schools."

Obviously, Brennan wants to sell the college route to tennis players. While potential professional women are beginning to compete in college first, several of the men on the pro circuit have gotten mileage out of winning the NCAA Championship before turning pro. Jimmy Connors (UCLA) and John McEnroe (Stanford), for instance, won the NCAA title as freshmen . . . then turned pro. Stanford got three years out of Tim Mayotte, who didn't win the NCAA crown until his junior year. . . then turned pro.

"Men mature later, not till they're 16 or 17 and ready to graduate from high school," Brennan pointed out. "The girls mature earlier, and that's why, like Andrea and Tracy, they figure they've got to go out and win their money while they can. But I think that's changing as more women go to college."

If Austin and Jaeger can get a few minutes with Brennan The College Tennis Salesman, maybe they'll backtrack and try the college route to straighten out their tennis woes.